The City and Sprint-Nextel settled a dispute this week with the City Council’s approval of the official settlement agreement at our June 5 Council meeting. If you live in Eden Prairie or Hennepin County, work here, travel through here, or pay taxes here, please read on because this settlement is a good thing for you. But before I tell you about the settlement, I need to tell you a little bit about the dispute. Please understand that this is a highly summarized story.
As the growth of the cell phone business continues year after year, so to has the level of interference that cell phones have created for public radio system. The frequency used by cell phones has been getting closer and closer to the frequencies used by public agencies to conduct their everyday business. This has created conflict for the cities and counties that had long operated on these radio frequencies and the cell phone companies. This matters to you – the public – because you don’t want your Police or Firefighter radio communication to be messed up by somebody’s cell phone conversation when you need their help. That was happening sometimes, and becoming more common.
Sprint-Nextel has a particular service that was impacting our radio system. A couple of years ago, Sprint-Nextel set up a fund to help defray the costs of public agencies who were moving their radio operations away from the Spring-Nextel “contractor network” system frequency. Most of those moving, including us, needed to move because of radio interference issues, and because of general radio system upgrades.
We submitted a claim to the Sprint-Nextel fund to pay the costs of our move, which we estimated to be between $2,500,000 and $3,500,000. This included around 1,000 new handheld radios (at a cost of about $2,800/radio) plus additional equipment and software for our dispatch center. Sprint-Nextel balked at our request. We pressed further under a set of FCC rules. They continued to strongly resist our claims.
Then last week we learned that after an unfavorable FCC ruling in a case with facts very similar to ours, Sprint-Nextel changed its response to us and agreed to our demands/requests. Not only are we getting the new radio equipment, dispatch center equipment & software, but we are also getting reimbursed for all of the legal fees and City staff we incurred in order to press our claim. In the end, we think this settlement will be worth over $3,000,000 to the City. And, not only is this settlement good for the City’s Police, Firefighters, Parks Workers, Utility Repair Crews, Street Maintenance Workers, etc., it also benefits the Eden Prairie School District and SouthWest Transit because the City serves their radio needs as well.
Hats off to Fire Chief George Esbensen, Assistant Fire Chief Steve Koering, Radio Communications Coordinator Mark Vandenberghe, City Attorney Ric Rosow and many others who worked so hard on this project. Your work paid off, and our citizens will benefit greatly from it. Thank you!
